Balance Patch: Non-capital ship Abilities

I'm not just working on capital ships btw, but anyways. Just some quick ideas.

Distortion field - I think this should mostly be left alone and the combos with this changed. An antimatter increase may be justified though.

Jump Degradation - Make it passive (I always thought it was before I tried it).

Embolden - A big issue I think, but it does need to be good. Raise shield mitigation maybe?

Repulsion - IDK, I don't have much experience with the subtitles of this ability, so I won't say anything.

Deceptive Illusion - Make it a tier 3 research and increase the duration are the only things I think we might be able to do to it.

Ruthlessness - Needs to stack. It doesn't have much range so I don't think it can be spammed in its own right.

Phasic Trap - I vote antimatter increase, and possibly make channeling.

Colony Pods - I say cost reduction, there is no reason these should cost the same as a weapons upgrade.

Induced Reverence - Isn't this just a tech, not an ability? Anyways I've always liked it, maybe just make it able to be researched quicker.

Resource Focus - At least double its initial rate, and full researched I think around 40% might be in order.

Communal labor - Never used it. Ever.

 

The subjugator needs something as well. It does have a repair ability, but it needs to be researched. It also had a frigate disable ability that I think should be made much more useful. If we do nothing to the abilities, its fleet supply should be reduced from 6-4.

Distortion Field

This is the big fish.  This ability prevents retreat, shuts down enemy firepower, shuts down enemy support cruisers, and allows you to lay mines around the incapacitated enemy to break them.  Kiting is not feasible because these guys will stop you cold.  This unit is just doing so much and everything it does is very effective.

And to make matters worse, this ability scales as fleets get larger (and by extension, denser).  I strongly believe we need to look at this ability very carefully.  On the one hand, Vasari need this ability as part of their late-game fighting force, on the other hand it's simply overwhelmingly powerful.


Jump Degredation
Make it passive and deal some damage to the inbound phase jumping units.  That's my thought.


Embolden
You know what's the one effect we don't have on any support cruiser currently?  Accuracy penalties.  How about the targets of Embolden have a % chance to evade incoming attacks?  Synergizes well with the hoshiko.


Repulsion
Biggest problem I have with this ability is that your capital ship loses all momentum when hit by this ability, even when moving away from it.  In effect, it's an instantaneous stun that can prevent retreats outright.  


Deceptive Illusion
Fine as is; illuminator is a bit weak right now, but this ability is fine.


Ruthlessness
Don't make it stack.  20 destras x 1.5 damage per second = 30 damage per second.  To the entire enemy fleet. 

Damage buff?  Sure, the malice combo is capped now.  But I wouldn't go any further than that.


Phasic Traps
Channeling wouldn't have much effect; this is the only ability of the hanger right now, and most people don't even build SC there, instead saving AM for this ability.

We need to get this to state at which the hanger is being used for SC, not just for this one ability.  I'm thinking a relatively small target cap, shorter duration, and lowered antimatter cost.  Why?  Because right now one of the big problems with the Vasari hanger is that no one builds SC there at all; they save all their AM for phasic traps.

I think hangers in general need a buff to their antimatter and antimatter regeneration, but this ability needs to have less antimatter cost so it doesn't produce a dissonance with the structure's other function.


Domina Subjugator
This guys is probably the worst support cruiser in the game despite being one of the highest on the tech tree.  These abilities aren't bad, the problem is that they're both channeling abilities, so on average a Domina gets to use them exactly once.  This greatly limits the applicability of this unit, and since both abilities are single-target it doesn't even scale.

There's effectively no way to buff suppression, and I wouldn't dare make it area of effect like the Subverter's equivalent ability.  Its perseverence ability could be buffed, but that will only go so far... not sure what to do with this guy.


Colony Pods
I'm leaning towards a secondary effect, just so they're a little bit more interesting.  If you just want to reduce cost, about 500 credits, 100 metal, 50 crystal should be about right.


Induced Reverence
When a starbase is upgraded with induced reverence, it increases the loyalty of the planet.  Purely economic starbase upgrades just aren't very interesting...


Resource Focus
If you're not willing to address resource focus yet, you probably shouldn't be looking at any of the economic techs... in fact, we can probably make a much longer list.  I still hold that this ability should be changed to 35%/45%/55% to balance it out. Refineries... minor cost decrease, then they're fine.

Let's not forget ice and volcanic planet population upgrades, while we're on the topic of economic techs.  Heck, I'm sure we could build a much longer list.

No; the problem is that the biggest factor in construction time is getting the little construction frigates into position to do the job.  Especially on fast and faster game speed, by the time the second construction frigate has arrived, the first one has already finished work.

But it gets even worse!  It's very rare that you need to rush a single construction job.  More often than not, time becomes a factor only when you have many construction jobs that need to get done.  In this case, this ability offers no benefit either because those frigates will work faster by splitting up and doing each job separately than trying to work together.

This tech is simply conceptually flawed, and effectively does nothing.

 

Subjugator is already at 4 fleet supply.  It's so underused that very few people actually know that

Since it seems to be the most overpowered, I'm going to try and tackle Phasic Trap first...

Right now this ability has two levels (both need to be researched)...

At both levels the antimatter cost is 50 and the cooldown is 75...

The range is 7000/8000 and the duration is 45/60...so, even at lvl 1, just two of these things can keep SC disabled forever...

I agree with Darvin...antimatter cost needs to be lowered (I'd go even so far as to eliminate the antimatter cost entirely)...people should not be building no SC just so they can use its ability, that is just strange...

My goal is to make one of these hangars still powerful, but multiple hangars not overpowered (at the very least, it should require a lot more than 2 to indefinitely trap anything)...so, in order to keep one hangar still powerful, I don't think the range should be reduced....

That leaves duration and cooldown....

Now, the cooldown could be increased by a lot...lets say we make it 150 instead of 75...problem is, all that does is require 3 hangars (instead of just 2) to indefinitely trap SC...that still isn't good enough...make the cooldown 300 and now you need 5 hangars...

Seeing as a player can build up to 8 (possibly more) hangars, I really don't think this is the route to go...a ridiculous cooldown would be needed to prevent indefinite trapping, and that would make one hangar almost useless, which is not the point...

So that leaves duration...duration could be decreased to 20/30...but again, we run into the same issue, now you just need 3 hangars to indefinitely trap SC...lower the duration even more, you need more hangars and one hangar becomes worthless...

Duration/Cooldown may need to be tweaked no matter what we do, but honestly I don't know if those can be the only changes we make....If someone has got some cooldown/duration numbers they think will work, I'd be happy to here them...

There are two other things we can mess with...one, a max target count, and two, we make the buff have a chance of occurring instead of always occurring...

For example, the current ability applies a buff every second to trap SC (this way, SC entering the area after the ability was used are still affected)...if there was only a 5% chance each second that any given SC would be trapped, think about that...

One second, 95% of SC are left...2s, and 90.3% are left...10s in and only 59.9% of SC are not trapped...20s in and only 35.8% of SC are left...nice thing about this is that it scales with fleet size...it's just an idea...

If anyone has some specific numbers they think will work that would be awesome...

Repulsion should probably not affect caps.  It has always bothered me that just a few Iconus chain stunning caps can prevent them from escaping hostile fire.  By mid-game everyone has to retreat caps sometimes.

Because it's not feasible to change the way Repulsion works to get rid of this unfortunate effect, I think I have to agree.  There are a lot of reasons why this probably shouldn't be the case, but cruisers simply shouldn't have capital ship stunning capabilities, and probably need a code change fix this.


I think the best approach is to give it a target cap.  That way it doesn't matter if you can keep the SC out of combat forever, it's only going to be a small number of SC.  No matter how many hangers an opponent has, there will always be a point at which you'll have enough SC to overwhelm them.

Okay good point...so let's say we go for a target cap, what value should we pick?

Even with full fleet supply, I'd say it'd be unlikely to see much more than 100 or so squadrons of SC from light carriers, and probably not much more than 20 or so from caps (obviously you could build more, but at the risk of anti-SC abilities killing your fleet firepower)...that is about 120 SC squadrons...

Now, you can have up 8 hangar bays (9 or more with the tactical pact and/or planetary bonuses) but odds are a planet won't have that many (repair bays, phase stabilizer, etc)...let's say that the highest number you'll likely see is 6 hangar bays...that is 20 squadrons per hangar bay...now, how exactly do you convert 20 squadrons into SC?  Well, for Vasari Bombers that is 60 while for Advent bombers that is 140...

Like animosity and magnetize we run into this tricky situation once again...

What compounds this issue even more is that the buff is a periodic action occurring every second, so setting a max target count will only apply to each occurrence...the easy fix is of course, make it not be a periodic action...I'm not sure which way to go on this yet...

Comparing static defenses to a 2000 supply fleet simply isn't on the table.  I can crush a fully-upgraded Vasari starbase without flinching if given a 2000 supply fleet, so I don't think this is the comparison to make at all.  A maxed out fleet, or really anything close to it, shouldn't have to worry about static defenses.

I'm thinking about half of the numbers you're looking at, maybe more like 10 squads.  This is the equivalent of disabling  70 command of fleet from the battle.  You've taken out more than a capital ship of power... all with a little hangar.  Especially if we're taking down the antimatter cost on this ability, that much is probably still on the strong side.

This is true...in most nearly every game I've played I hardly ever exceed more than 6 fleet supply upgrades (I believe that is 1360 fleet supply)...so that is maybe 80 squadrons...

I think your value of 10 squads is pretty good...that is about 70 command which is quite a bit for a hangar, I agree...so, that leaves us from 30 SC to 90 SC, which is a very large range...I would be inclined to go with a lower number, somewhere between 30 and 50...

Definitely; it makes more sense for this to hurt bombers (smaller squads) more than fighters. 

When paying attention to the number of strike craft per squad, we can ignore the Vasari case.  There are two reasons for this; the first is that it's the mirror match, so the opponent has this tool as well.  Even if phasic traps are a little stronger in this case, both sides have access to them.  Secondly, the attacking Vasari has the option of using "jam weapons" as his own counter-measure here.  So we can primarily focus on the TEC and Advent squad sizes, which don't vary quite as much.

So probably around 50 individuals is the right number to target.

Alright, I second just removing capital ships from repulses target target type.

I don't know how we can make an ability that targets a friendly ship decrease the accuracy of all other ships for embolden, though maybe the Halycon's lvl 6 ability might be capable of that.

Ruthlessness doesn't have to stack infinitly, maybe just limit it to 10 or something.

Maybe just removing the channeling from suppression and make it so it can effect a couple of frigates within the cooldown time. For Perseverance, it needs to restore a bit more hull and maybe add a secondary effect.

 

A good point and good analysis...that is 10 TEC bomber squadrons and 7 Advent bomber squadrons, which I think is a very appropriate number...

So, if there is a cap of 50, then we have to address the issue of implementation...since this ability currently is a periodic action, the best way to solve this issue is to simply make it an instant action...like animosity, the periodic action really isn't as important if there is a target cap, and it requires you to use the ability with a bit better timing...

There also is the issue of lowering antimatter cost...

The ability costs 50 antimatter while the facility regenerates .25 antimatter per second...over the cooldown which is 75s that is 18.75 antimatter...so if this ability cost 20 antimatter, it essentially would have a net cost of 0 (more or less)...I'm thinking maybe an antimatter cost of 25 or 30?  I'm not sure if we should quite shoot for a net cost of 0....

I'm thinking this is the way to go as well...I'm going to look into seeing if there's another way to get this ability to work so this isn't an issue, but I'm not hopeful...

I don't know either, but damage reduction would more or less have the same effect, and sort of fits into the concept of this ability...

I was thinking that too...let's say we want this ability to be 3 times more powerful...we can bump it to 4.5 DPS or we could have a stacking limit of 3...but what's the difference?  Seriously, does any one know of a strategic or tactical difference?  If there is one, I'd like to take it into account...I don't think there is, but I could be wrong...

One thing that could be done to make these abilities more useful is have a lower antimatter cost and near zero cooldown...that way, at least there's no penalty if the channeling is broken...

Personally, I think this needs to be buffed (for all hangers).  Currently, if you don't have any antimatter upgrades, a hanger will actually run out of antimatter before it finishes building its first two squads and will need to regenerate to complete them.  This is unacceptably slow and is precisely why hangers suck right now.  So I think fix that first.

One of the reasons I was going for miss-inducing effect was to give Targeting Uplink a bigger role in the mirror match to counter-act this ability, but DR works too.

Unless you're bringing out a single destra for this one ability, which is kind of silly, then no there wouldn't be a difference.  I'd say we may as well just buff the damage for the sake of clarity.  Stacking to a limit of three is a tad convoluted.

That would definitely help.  Since these abilities are channeling anyways, cooldown pretty much could be zero and it wouldn't make the unit much stronger, just able to switch targets more readily.

 

Malice....For every Ship affect by Ruthlessness and Malice has the damage increased.

 

If not used it, try it out. Even using it on 10 ships group you will see that the Malice increase that tiny 1 DPS to 7-8. And that just 10 ships. Im not exact on the numbers but the more ships affected by the combo the more damage is spread and magnified.

 

TBH, This ability is fine. Free damage just for being around your targets. Even if its low it better than the other races get. and once you factor in the the Advent Typical Mind set of Battleballs and Synergies, You will see this ability fits fine in its current state.

 

Repluse, just remove Capships from the Buff Target.

Distortion Field, Give it a Target Cap. So a Vasari player can still use them to shut down entire fleets but will have to invest in more ships. I dont thing this really will affect most players as they usually make a crap ton of these things if they use this troublesome tactic.

 

I support Darvin's suggestion for Embolden. This would work wonders for TEC late game. The ablility to negate some FF, even if its just a small amount.

 

 

And the rest I dont really have an vocal opinion yet.

 

 

Target cap is not a bad idea...I really don't know a good number for it yet but I like the idea...would preventing this ability from structures be a good idea?  Right now it can disable repair bays and point defense platforms...target cap may be enough though...

True, didn't really think it would be that significant but if you do the math, the max target count is IIRC 24...that is 1.5*24*0.3 = 10.8 DPS...for simply existing I suppose that isn't bad though most of that damage will be easily absorbed by mitigation and shield regen (since it isn't FF but AoE)...

Okay, then lets work on that too...

If I read the files correctly, it costs 75 antimatter to build a fighter squadron and 125 to build a bomber squadron...it took about 20s just to build one fighter (6 are in a squad), which is about .625 antimatter per second...given the regeneration rate of .25, I agree this is definitely a problem...

A TEC light carrier regenerates .4 AM per second and it costs 90 AM to build a fighter squadron...I didn't time it but let's just say that it takes 20s or so to build a TEC fighter on a light carrier...that is .75 AM used per second...the AM regen rate means it is a net loss of .35 AM per second if the carrier is constantly building SC...since the carrier has 400 AM, it could in theory build SC for 1143s...almost 20 minutes...

Let's say we wanted a hangar bay to continue for 20 minutes...with 250 antimatter, a net loss of about .2 antimatter would make it last for about 20 minutes...so, what if the antimatter regeneration rate was increased from .25 (TEC/Vasari) and .35 (Advent) to .45 and .65?  That means there is a net antimatter depletion of .175....it would be able to last about 1429s which is 24 minutes (so, uhm, there was some rounding error)...we could even bump up the antimatter regen rates to .5 and .75...feedback appreciated...

 

Yeah but think of it this way. Thats 10 DPS to all ships affected. Thats half of the Hoski Repair ability or half of the Repair platforms ( excluding the upgraded TEC ones). Or 10 less Sheild Restore from a Prog, etc etc etc.

Its not really about causing damage but almost negating repairing buffs.

And from that perspective it means it does help FFing...since there is the possibility of malice (a very good possibility) I think I agree with you...this ability is probably fine as is...

What about removing the channeling requirement on one or both of the Domina's abilities?  I find Perseverance especially inconvenient as a channeling ability (I'm sure I'm not alone).

As for Repulsion: What if we added a very brief but very large acceleration buff to targets when they're hit?  Might this offset the momentum-reducing stun issues?  This might be a bit funny though since it would probably let ships immediately charge back towards the Iconus.

Otoh, I can also imagine problems if capitals are the only thing not affected by Repulsion.  Wouldn't this make it alot easier to isolate a capital ship from its supporting fleet?

 

 

This is the argument everyone uses.  OH NOES!  The Capital will get isolated from its fleet!!!  I don't really understand how this is worse than the current system of stunning the Capital so it can't run and killing it while you push its fleet around too.  I would much rather risk that a Capital would get isolated but at least know I could run it instead of the current system of knowing I'm going to lose my caps if I put them into fights with Repulse spammers.  If you see the Capital is about to get separated, you at least have a chance to escape.

Normally I'd agree, but we're talking about a 7-lab tech.  I'd say it does need a bit more presence.


Probably won't work.  As you already mention, most Vasari players bring a lot of these to the fight.  However, another issue is the fact that a common counter-measure is to spread out your fleet, so against a competent player subverters may not even be hitting that cap.  Finally, there's the issue that a target cap would affect heavies and carriers disproportionately to LRF and flak.  


Couldn't hurt to give them a little nudge, too.  This is the big reason why carrier cruisers get ignored in favour of carrier caps early on.


No, it doesn't.  Carriers lose antimatter every time they jump, and even when freshly built don't have full reserves.  The result is that most carriers enter battle with between 0 and 300 antimatter, usually towards the lower end of that spectrum.  

Secondly, your calculation is off, because TEC carriers build two squads at once, so they're actually using 1.5 antimatter per second.  Discounted for regeneration, that's 1.1 per second.  Your full 400 antimatter will last you 360 seconds, or six minutes, a far cry from your 20 minutes.


This would certainly be an improvement.  I'd combine this with making freshly built hangers have full antimatter (rather than starting at half capacity), and call it a starting point.




This would fundamentally change the unit.  I'm not sure whether that would be going too far, or if it's the right direction.  Open for discussion, though.


If the velocity and repulsion vectors are opposed, I have no problems with units coming to a stop; this is the expected effect.  However, if they're orthogonal or constructive, replusion should have no effect on their speed when used, only giving them a shove in a certain direction.  However, I don't think that's possible without a code change.



Totally agree.  Certainly separating the capital ship from the fleet is bad, but the current stun effect is a lot more dangerous.

If Distortion Field and Repulse don't get nerfed in any way, the Hoshiko's Demo Bots ability needs to be omni-directional. It's completely ridiculous how Vasari and Advent players get a way to shut down entire fleets, yet TEC doesn't. This change would at least allow TEC players to remain competative late-game.

If not, Distortion Field needs some sort of target cap, preferably at about 5-10 ships.

I think I could support making demo-bots omni-directional regardless.

I concur...

Forgot about that...well, let me ask this...are carriers really seen as that weak?  I mean, I'm hearing talk that light carriers need a buff with antimatter regen...sure, this will make them more competitive with carrier caps but SC are pretty powerful as it is...I suppose if construction time, not antimatter, was the limiting factor, well...I suppose that makes sense for the most part...

Then that will probably be the first change...combined with a target cap (50?) on Phasic trap perhaps?

It certainly would make the unit more powerful, but it would be a big change...that the abilities are more powerful and last longer but are channeling is what makes this unit, well, what it is...

I'm still going to advocate having a lower antimatter cost and low cooldown (say, 5 or 10s) so that there's no penalty if the ability is interrupted...not saying no other changes will be needed, but this is a start I think...

 

This is the primary early-game issue that makes carrier capital ships rule the roost.  Carrier cruisers get depleted very easily, whereas capital ships will just keep replacing squads all day long without pause.  I have no problems with this being the advantage of capital ship carriers (and by extension, starbase hangers) but right now the carrier cruiser just doesn't have the staying power early on.

Once fleets get a little bigger, battles become faster-paced and antimatter regeneration upgrades become available.  However, when fleets are small and you can count your carrier force with one hand, antimatter is a huge problem.


So, to recap:

* TEC/Vasari hangers get 0.45 antimatter regeneration, Advent gets 0.65.

* Phasic Traps gets a target cap of 50 and keeps its antimatter of 50 and duration of 45/60 with cooldown of 75

I'm still on the fence as to whether we should tinker with the other aspects of Phasic Traps, but this is a good starting point.



Agreed

I'm going to try this out...will require making it an instant action instead of a periodic action to enforce the target cap but that should be fine...