Hmmm... just running them all through my head.

Martyrdom on the Seeker is quite lackluster

Gravity Mines for Vasari are kinda redundant (why slow something down when you can kill it with regular mines?)

Yeah, without stepping into economic territory, that's about it.

So, anyone coming?  Or am I waiting in the lobby in vain?  (Sunday, 11 AM Pacific, 2 PM Eastern)

1. The damage has to be doubled at least to be useful, or made easier to use if possible (the delay between getting close enough and it actually taking effect is a killer).

2. The only way I could see using these would be to make them disable phase jump for several minutes at least. I.e. retreat will not be an option anytime soon if you get hit by one of these.

And sorry Darvin, didn't realize we were trying to have a game today.

Want to arrange a time for Monday?

Okay...let's consider both of those improvements...martyrdom damage increased from 250 to 500, and the duration of the gravity mine effect could be increased from 45s to 90s (remember, the effect stacks)...

And by the way Darvin, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you would also be playing on Sunday (I figured it would be one day or the other)...my apologies....

I thought that PBhead was coming on Sunday, but that didn't happen.  No matter.

Unless anyone wants to make plans in the next few hours, I'm not available till Friday.

I'm checking up on the forums now, but I got stuff to do this afternoon so today probably won't work...

sorry, the first time i was able to check the forums on sunday was 3:00 pm, and the forums went boom for me.

we need to figure out a better way of communicating... cause with forums... if you say "i am available!"... and someone checks forums once a day... the chances of being on RIGHT AFTER that person says that, is very low... (if your on the forums 5 min early... you cant read thier message... and 5 min late, they prolly already started doing something else.)

That's why we set these things up ahead of time, but you're right, a better system would be appropriate (that said, I'm available most hours on most weekends and can be pretty responsive)

I had fun with martyrdom once.

Vanilla sins, somewhere around v.1.15

Around 75 seekers with martyrdom. Killed an entire fleet with them.

I wonder what happened... I cannot replicate the feat.

They all die too quickly, with no chance to use martyrdom. You could increase the range.

Some patch after that seems to have made it into a useless ability.

After entrenchment, seekers get killed by starbases. I vote to give it some kind of damage boost against structures and starbases.

Just my stupid ideas...

Not stupid, actually...martyrdom could be set to have a larger range, and could be set to only affect structures and SBs...

Does anyone think this would be a good idea?  Seeker vessel martyrdom does more damage (500-1000) and has a greater range, but can only be used against structures and starbases...thoughts?

Tread carefully with this ability.  Because it's instant damage (and lots of it), it could easily go over the top as a nuke ability.  Very tough to balance, IMO.

I do think we'll probably need to tinker scouts, anyways.  Seekers have ungodly durability for their tiny cost, and it's a problem that should have been addressed in 1.19.  The devs, for some reason, nerfed damage for all the scouts.  This made Vasari and TEC scouts virtually worthless for combat, while the Advent Seeker remained viable due to its much superior durability.

I personally think we should revert (or at least partially revert) the scout damage nerf, then cut back on the seeker's durability.  The seeker was really the only problem scout in 1.18.

PS - maybe set up a thread for technologies and economic upgrades sometime this week.  There are plenty of those to discuss (many of which are currently useless).

What do you mean revert the scout damage nerf?  You mean, make the scouts more powerful?  I really don't want to do that...we're having a hard enough time as it is balancing the armor/weapon types, I really don't want to throw in another counter to LRFs...besides, I have a conceptual problem with scouts being combat units...

DPS per fleet supply point, TEC = 1.28, Advent = 1.21, and Vasari = 1.23...so Advent actually does the least damage (but it has the most HP)...a 10% reduction in the seeker's HP would probably be good enough...

If the Advent scout is seen as too powerful, then I'd recommend reducing it's HP and shields...TEC scout has 625 total HP, Vasari is at 650, and Advent is at 825...

DPS per fleet supply point, TEC = 1.28, Advent = 1.21, and Vasari = 1.23...so Advent actually does the least damage (but it has the most HP)...a 10% reduction in the seeker's HP would probably be good enough...

Right now it is at 400 hull and 425 shields...if that was dropped to 350 hull and 375 shields, that would put it at 725 total HP (a 12% reduction)...would that be a good change?

Martyrdom could be a problem to balance...but I think if it is only allowed against structures, it would be much easier to balance...SBs have shield mitigation, so even 1000 damage would only be 400...

I'd say 20 ogrovs is a pretty solid and viable amount to build if you are going to attack a very powerful SB...that is 240 fleet supply, so you could replace those with 120 scouts...120 seekers doing 400 damage each (after mitigation) would be 48000 damage...even if the damage was buffed to only 500, that is still 24000 damage (usually enough to kill an SB outright...)

To be honest, I'm not sure if a damage buff is the way to go here...I think Syneptus (at least I think it was him) is right...the key to making this ability useful is the range...

If you built 120 scouts and you knew for certain they would hit their target, then that is 12000 damage done in a very short period of time...I'd advocate leaving the damage at 250 and simply making this ability more useful by increasing its range....I'd advocate increasing the range from 200 to 500...that is a tentative number, I'd like to do some testing to see where this is practical....

I think it would be preferable to revert the damage nerf only for the TEC and Vasari scouts. Then at least they'd be able to compete with Seekers, but not damage the Seeker's use entirely. Advent is pretty reliant on them early-game anyways; they do need durable scouts to compete at first.

The thing about scouts is that they're also countered by flaks and fighters, so the very things pressuring LRF right now will also protect them from scouts.

What happened was in 1.19, Advent scouts took a 20% damage nerf while TEC and Vasari scouts took a 15% damage nerf.  I found this odd, because my biggest complaint was that Advent scouts had too much durability.  As you can see with your comparison, they're WAY higher than the others. 

Good news!  I think I have martyrdom actually working!

So, I tested this ability without any changes, and I found two problems...first, there was really no efficient way to get a massive amount of seekers to quickly go kamikaze...second, even if all of them managed to hit their target quickly, it seemed to not do that much damage...I mean, like not do even remotely close to what you'd expect (even with shield mitigation and armor taken into account)...

So, I looked at the files and found ways to get around these two issues...

First, the ability file had the autocast only activated when the seeker itself exceeded 50% damage...this alone is what made it difficult to efficiently get large amounts of seekers to go kamikaze without them all getting blown up before they reached their targets...

Second, the reason why the damage was so minuscule was because it didn't stack...apparently, if too many martyrdoms are done in rapid succession, they cancel each other out because of a stacking limit...

So, I changed the ability file to allow autocast to activate regardless of damage taken...also, the buff that does the 250 damage now no longer has any stacking limit....

If you have all your seekers selected, simply turn the ability on autocast and click on the target...all the seekers will automatically do their suicide run without even stopping...no micro, it is as simple as it gets...with the ability actually working, I am hesitant to increase the damage...25 seekers using this did almost 4000 damage to a structure (which had 4500 hull, so it wasn't destroyed) and did about 2000 or so damage to a lvl 1 capital ship...

250 x 25 seekers is 6250 damage...the structure had 7 armor which would reduce that to 4630...why it did just under 4000 damage is beyond me, but nevertheless this ability is working much better...50 of these things could pretty much guarantee killing any capital ship if you had even a decent amount of ships to finish it off...

Sort of overlooked previous suggestions to buff gravity mines...would an increase in duration from 45s to, say, 90s be good?

Actually, that's probably good.  We can then buff this ability on the presumption that it's not possible to simply bomb one target with an inordinate number of seekers.

I say restore the stacking limit and increase the damage.

Your gravity mine change is good.

Now, here's a topic we've overlooked till now:  Superweapons.  I don't have any particular beef with the Novalith or Deliverance Engine... the big issue is the Kostura.  It's pretty nasty even if you get one, and if you can put up 10 or 12 it's effectively GG.  I propose a stacking limit on its damage and stun effect so it can't be used in rapid succession on the same planet.

Well, the stacking limit was 1...with that limit, 50 seeker vessels did about the same damage as 25...which did about the same damage as 10...which was maybe 500 damage...I can understand reasoning to manipulate the ability by keeping this in place (and buffing damage) but honestly, I don't know if that's the route to go...50 of these things weren't enough to kill a lvl 1 capital ship outright (no upgrades), and that is 100 fleet supply (10 Destras)...yeah, they are cheap, but if you fail to kill your target then it is a huge waste of resources...using this ability requires a lot of dedication to amassing scouts and a lot of risk, because for every scout you build that is less resources and fleet supply you have to build a real combat ship...

50 of these things could probably guarantee a kill on a low level cap if you had a lot of support (and remember, caps are harder to kill now), but without support the ship is just going to retreat...against an SB, you'd have to have a ridiculous amount, and once you used them, you'd have virtually no fleet...since Advent have the worst economy, they are going to have the hardest time replenishing losses and building a fleet quickly...

I agree that the Kostura is overpowered...the deliverance engine is weak, but the Advent are very strong late game so I think it's probably fine...I honestly don't really know what to do with this thing though...

The damage it does is insane when stacked, but not a big deal at all when only one hits you...the fleet disablement only lasts 15s, but the structure disablement is 180s...

My feeling is, the purpose of this weapon is to allow you to blitz the targeted planet...you stun all ships and structures, and then phase jump in, giving you really nice shock power...however, I don't like the idea of this weapon being able to destroy entire fleets and planets without any other action...

If the damage that is done was simply reduced (1500 for structures and 600 for ships IIRC), it wouldn't be quite as powerful...

I suppose tweaking the stacking would also help...you could set it to prioritize old buffs, I'm not sure though if that would prevent damage being done though...

As I said, buff the damage martyrdom deals to compensate for the stacking cap.  Perhaps raise the stacking cap from 1 to a higher number, but I don't think we should go with infinite. 

Reduced damage is out of the question, IMO.  This just makes a single Kostura strike negligable, while only raising the threshold for Kostura spam (which, in a  5v5, will be reached by a pocket Vasari given enough time). 

That's the challenge; see if there's anything we can do prevent Kostura spam.  The biggest problem is that it eventually becomes impossible to defend, because if your fleet shows up at a friendly planet, that planet will get barraged by Kosturas and your fleet vapourized.

Well, I don't know what to do here...

Without changing damage, I don't know what we can do here to prevent kostura spamming from wiping out whole fleets...ships are only disabled for 15s, so if the cannon shells are 20s apart then there is pretty much nothing that can be done...

Honestly, that the kostura damages ships at all is a problem too me...the other two super weapons only affect the planet, but your fleet is unaffected...what makes the kostura overpowered is its ability to affect a whole fleet, the single most important asset that you have...

The advantages the kostura has are inherently overpowered...there are defenses and counters to the other super weapons, but there is nothing that can be done to stop a kostura except building massive amounts of repair ships, and even that doesn't work very well...something has to give, and if it isn't damage then I don't really know what else can be done...

The choices are fairly drastic with "super weapons". You can nerf the kostura to be as inneffective as the Novalith or Deliverance cannons (i.e. no more super weapons). Or... buff the Novalith and Deliverance to be equally brutal. 

Personally, I would go for buffing the other super weapons to see how it plays out.

A Novalith cannon that also damages ships and structures in the gravity wel.

A Deliverance engine that also applies mass disorientation to the affected fleet for a small duration.

No, that does nothing, as well-timed bombardments will kill you before the stun breaks.

The only counter is to never allow your fleet to enter a friendly gravity well (since the Kostura cannot attack neutral or enemy GW's), which means you cannot defend.

Making the Kostura only affect structures and not fleet is certainly an option.

I would go for that...the fleet debuff is what really makes the kostura overpowered...being able to destroy all structures and defenses is still pretty powerful, and that they are disabled for a few minutes gives the Vasari player a very nice offensive option...it still would be harder to defend against than a novalith, but that's fine...

The question is, would such a drastic change go over well? 

I certainly think it would help balance the late-game...the orbital structures around a planet are usually more valuable than having the planet itself (factories being the prime exception)...kostura strikes also are the absolute best counter to enemy superweapons...not only can you disable them, but several kosturas can outright destroy them and even one kostura would allow you to jump a fleet there and destroy the super weapon..

I don't know. If your goal is to prevent Kostura spamming maybe it will work from that standpoint. But, as you have pointed out the Kostura cannon is still the most useful late game tech as it can disable structures and provide back door entry into enemy territory, you just wouldn't need as many.

Given the other Super weapons are still less viable I don't think this really solves anything. And frankly, I think spamming super weapons should be a game ending strategy. Unfortunately, the Kostura cannon is the only one that truly fulfills this role.