I agree they are both expensive and risky investments...however, I'd be wary of making them more powerful...10 siege frigates can be rather costly, but eco players in MP games often build this many or more siege frigates with flak/hoshikos and can wipe out undefended HWs in sneak attacks...there was a time when siege frigates were more resilient than they are now, and it was a major problem because throwing a few siege frigates at various enemy planets could throw your enemy off balance for a long period of time...a lot of people absolutely hated the stronger siege frigates (almost as much as kiting light carriers), so I've very wary of strengthening them...

I agree 100%...I'm hoping that if solanus adjudicators cost less and use less fleet supply, they will be more useful...the important comparison is with Advent bombers...no matter how good adjudicators are, if bombers are always better then players will always build bombers...reducing the cost and then the fleet supply from 18 to 15 I hope will be enough to foster their use, but not make them overpowered...

Making these ships harder to destroy I think may make things more problematic...if a player brings 10 or 15 of these things, it can be a big problem for your defending starbase, but it is not guaranteed doom...making these ships harder to kill I think would make them too powerful because any starbase would essentially be expensive fodder for ogrovs and adjudicators...right now ogrovs are powerful enough to be worth building and sacrificing fleet v fleet strength, but they are weak enough to at least require some fleet support so they don't get torn to shreds by fighters and what not...

Not really; siege frigates are purely a clean-up unit.  If there are any defenders at all, they suck royally and you should be using siege-class capital ships.

This is the opposite of what we want to do.  We don't want to see the siege frigate become a silly rush gambit, we want to see it as a viable long-term strategy.  The Vulkoras and Marza are already very suitable rush gambits on their own.  Remember that they get abilities that raise their siege damage even higher.

It should be.  50 supply in capital ships does much more than bombard, but 50 supply in siege frigates can only bombard. 

Not true; contested planets often see bombardment.  And I demonstrated the Vulkoras rush just the other week, you should know this isn't the case.

I'm up any time this weekend.

So what parts still need work? I like to help spit ball ideas. even if it just highlights what you should NOT do

Personally, I think it's a lost cause.  If I could sit down with the source code for a few weeks, I think I could work magic with them, but within the limitations of a mod I don't think there's much to do.

I can understand being too busy.  I just started working full time, and this leaves me extraordinarily little free time during the weekdays..

Describe my dream pirates, eh?

The deployment of pirate raids would no longer be dependent upon an arbitrary timer.  Instead, pirate raids would deploy as bounty increases and empires expand.  The more bounty and the larger the empires, the faster pirate raids would spawn.  There would no longer be a practical limit of one active raid at a time, and instead many raiding groups could be active at once.  The maximum number would also be governed by a combination of empire size and bounty.

Pirate raids would select their target planet on a four-point criteria:

1. How accessible the target gravity well is from their current location
2. How many other pirate raid groups are operating near the target 
3. How much opportunity (a combination of bounty and trade ship activity) does the target present
4. How well defended the target is

This would mean that pirate raiders would avoid competing with each other, prefer targets with high bounty and many trade ports, avoid defenses, and try to avoid needlessly long treks or passing through defended systems.  However, their target would not be static; pirates would periodically re-evaluate their chosen target and attack something different if a better situation presents itself. They also will not attack an enemy unless they're certain they can win.

This system would create pirates that do not rely on overtaking defended targets, but instead taking cheap shots for easy profit.  This system would have weaker pirate raiders that are far more cunning and underhanded.  This would make pirates an excellent weapon against pocket players who over-expand, while they wouldn't be a significant threat to a small empire with a good defensive fleet.  This would also get rid of the ebay bidding system; you can put down bounty any time and get effect out of it.

One thing I would do, and we can do, is lower the amount of bounty given for each kill (particularly against trade ships and strike craft, which have no actual monetary value) so it lasts longer.

I posted something to this effect back when Diplomacy was in development.  If it wasn't going to happen then, it's just not going to happen.

This thread focuses on dealing with balance between the unit types, not necessarily 1 faction's unit that is clearly better or worse than the other two (Illuminator, Skinatra, Seeker etc.). If just the Illuminatior or other individual unit needs a buff or nerf, that is something that should be done only the balance patch is near completion, so we can look at it within the "big picture".

reduce composite's damage modifier vs medium?

I feel that increasing the LF's damage modifiers vs... preety much everything according to the readme was the wrong way to buff them... If you make it so lrms are needed to kill lf, instead of being able to rely on HCs?

The problem is, we are just fiddling... and that isnt always the best approach.  If we could borrow the dev's awesome spreadsheet of balancing theory.... we might be able to think about things more logicly.

sorry about the wrong thread. this was the one with the more recent discussions and that was as far as i thought about it.

are you sure about the illuminators? if thats where they're suposed to be i say it seems the other lrfs are too strong. they just dont take out enough for their short existence. at least to me.