[General balance suggestion] The capital ships need to be much tougher as level increases.

I look back with nostalgia to the days in wich the good guys would crap their pants at the sight of enemy capital ships...

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I was thinking more alone the lines of "oh hell, its one of those marzas...."

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it would also be possible to give capships a general big boost and exaggerate their weapons arcs more. for example, some ships can have a lot of front batteries, others side weapons and still others have good allround cover. I know, it is already, but as I said, it could be more pronounced.

to give a short example, a long time ago, still in the beta testing, we did some playing of for example a kol vs a marza. result was that unmanaged, the marza would beat the kol handily. if, however, the kol went into maneuvering and exploited the marza's extremely narrow firing arc, it could prevail.

my point is not that I want capships to do this kind of stuff, but that in order to take them down without exceding cost you would have to use your frigates such to exploit these weak points. so, effectively, the changed gameplay would be that if you did attack it from a weak angle, split your fleet and such, you kill it and make it a numeric win, but if you attack it at its strong area, even a large frigate force would take heavy losses.

in order for this to work a few things would proably have to change:

1) turn rate should be decreased, OR, frigates could get a flight pattern that is more similar to fighters, ie. the fly around and make passes at enemy ships. either way, the result needs to be that the direction from which you attack should make a difference for some time and not only for the few seconds it needs to capship to turn around for its favourite angle.

2)weapon damage probably needs to change too. if it takes just 10 - 15 seconds to kill off a fully health cap ship, then the 60 seconds or whatever it takes to kill a frigate ( or more via abilities) are too much. I'd rather go via the "it lives longer", but more weapons to attack many more targets at the same time would be nice, even at a single side. would be nice if the kol had not one autocannon to attack one frigate at its side, but several.

3) maybe the capships can profit from a shield split, as it sometimes happens in tactical simulators. after all you might not have more than a few of them in any given battle, so the time may be there to make adjustment here and there. sort of like front, aft, board and starboard shields and being able to down them seperately. that could make them more vulnerable at some points and less so at others. there could be an option to transfer power, but it would work only after a short while and greatly drain the others.

in sum, this could make capship role fairly diverse. some could be heavy hitters that are really strong vs. structures, capital ships, planets and such. others are better vs cruisers and still others vs the lighter frigates. guess it is already in somehow already, but maybe not extreme enough.

clearly, this would be something very long-term. maybe it is also just nonsense, but I just thought "hey, why not make much stronger, but very suceptible to some tactics instead of just some ships or just swarms of any ship".

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These FANTASTIC ideas are great and all (not) since you all keep forgetting - early game you need to be able to take a cap down without having to have your own cap in the battle. Sure it should cost you a lot of frigates, but that is the cost of killing their free cap.

Once you get to mid/late game, there is nothing the devs can do short of giving a cap god mode at Lvl10 due to the weight of numbers, and firepower upgrades etc.... If 2000 fleet points rocks up, nothing should live when targetted due to the overwhelming firepower. This was proven ages ago

Quote 1: We have no choice General Calrissian, our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!

Quote 2: We've got to give those fighters more time. Concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer

And why can they not repel firepower of that magnitude???

Quote 3: It's a trap!!!

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Yes, but you just answered your own conundrum. If capital ships need to be weaker early on, keep their mitigation and damage low then. As they level up, which takes considerable time through experience farming and considerable credits through purchasing levels, increase mitigation and damage output along a balanced scale.

By this process, you could end up with level 10 capital ships that are still far from invulnerable, but also not able to be vaporized easily by coordinated mass frigate spam.

I still don't think it's a huge issue, but I don't see the harm in tweaking them to be more worth their large investment cost.

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Yes, but you just answered your own conundrum. If capital ships need to be weaker early on, keep their mitigation and damage low then. As they level up, which takes considerable time through experience farming and considerable credits through purchasing levels, increase mitigation and damage output along a balanced scale.

But they already do this!!! Armor and firepower increases with each level. One Lvl10 Kol could take 3 other caps no worries. The issue which no one can get around is that the size of the fleet is such that the raw firepower is overwhelming - similar to the shock and awe that the Americans used in Iraq - the other side is overwhelmed.

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Allow me to give a slight history lessons about Cap ships. With a few well placed torpedoes and bombs (from strike craft mind you) in a few battles at the Solomon Isles In WWII the USS Enterprise was temporarily put out of commission at least twice (maybe more missed those episodes of Battle 360) due to heavy damage and keep in mind that this was Real Life Focus Fire as the carriers were the primary targets.

This is a prime example of how your strategy determins the face of the war as you seek to counter and subdue your enemies so too does your opponent

So in my honest opinion id say cap ships are right were they need to be in this game and if your not satisfied yourself then just remember that the devs were nice enough to give us all access to modding tools to tweak ship values ourselves (use em myself for SP)

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Allow me to give a slight history lessons about Cap ships. With a few well placed torpedoes and bombs (from strike craft mind you) in a few battles at the Solomon Isles In WWII the USS Enterprise was temporarily put out of commission at least twice (maybe more missed those episodes of Battle 360) due to heavy damage and keep in mind that this was Real Life Focus Fire as the carriers were the primary targets.

This is a prime example of how your strategy determins the face of the war as you seek to counter and subdue your enemies so too does your opponent

So in my honest opinion id say cap ships are right were they need to be in this game and if your not satisfied yourself then just remember that the devs were nice enough to give us all access to modding tools to tweak ship values ourselves (use em myself for SP)

That is a good example. But the point is it was only strike craft that did it. Strike craft had to be able to get past defenses and drop their weapons. The other ships kept other ships off their back. The carrier can protect a fleet or destroy. It plays both roles. Like wise say something like some cruisers protect the carrier from other cruisers.

The cruisers can be destroyed by stike craft, so the carriers strike craft will help protect them.

That part of the game works.

Its the fact cruises can ignore other cruisers and go strait to the carrier. Sure in real life you could get close enoght to start shelling the carrier but your going to loose the ships you send in to do it. In this game that part just does not seem to work well.

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Eh, in my opinion cap ships are good as is, I usually have one of each with an extremely large fleet (yeah you can get sixteen but the straight five are more manigable). I micromanage the good abilities and autocast anything that I really don't care for. Usually all my cap ships survive fights because of the tactics I use with them, as for enemy cap ships, the only time I'm ever "Oh damn I need to target that" is if it's lvl 4+, otherwise I just let it fall to the random strikecraft and frigates of mine that go for it over another target.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Well, suppose you have late game, and you have a one or a couple of high level cap ships, (lvl 6+) with all of the nice abilities.

The problem is, you can't use them; the moment you bring your cap ships into the battle, they got insta-gibbed by insane firepower.

Let's a bit honest; how does long your typical lvl 6+ ship survive against 50+ LRMs, 20+ HCs, and now hordes of bombers in 1.09/1.1? It does not take that much good micro to click the capital ship (big size) to focus all the firepower.

Other than Kol, I usually see my capital ships VIRTUALLY VAPORITZED in the matter of a minute, if not seconds. In the end, the whole purpose of capital ships become like this....

1. Quickly use abilities and retreat to neighboring planet.

2. If a capital ship is very durable type (e.g Kol) you can distract enemy player for a while by circling around the planet, but it won't last long.

I suggest, at the level of 6, the total hp (including shields) of capital ship needs to be 10000+ at mininum, or even more.

I would agree, i am a somewhat casual player of no great skill and i literally get slaughtered by the AI if i don't spam my ships, or cheat with a trainer or a mod that does something. I can't help that i am not yet a great player. And i suppose if games were made for casual players like me, the real gamers would get bored and pass on by. So the question is this: Is it unreasonable to have ships increase hull and shield hp in order to survive end game levels of opponents? I personally don't think so, and it could be implemented, in my opinion, as a toggle, much like pirates. Do i want increased hp with each level? Yes or No. That simple. Toggle yes, and start game. Or if im a heavy gamer and i eat nails for breakfast and always play on multi-multi hard mode, then i can sneer at the toogle button as i press the go for it start button!

Also mods don't always have to give gamers unfair advantages. Many many round out the experience or add new things, like bigger or different planets, or derelict ship graveyards, or increased hangar craft or mobiledefense or any number of things that make the game more fun, and not necessarily out of balance for the gamer. But there are of course gamers, me included, that lose my head regularly if i don't do something. A nice balance would be either a mod, or a dev addition that gives the capitals some staying power without unbalancing the game. It could be a simple trade off in the end game, that all ships increase in shielding and hull points, both the player and the ai, but the weapon values go down proportionally. In those cases it might be the strategy of the kinds of support ships the player brings in that make the difference. Or simply out staying the ai, by bringing in back up ships from the homeworld. All without losing the capitals that took so very very long to develope. I too hate to lose a ship i've spent the better part of several hours developing. better to lose a few scores of lower frigates with lower hull/shield/armor values.

Just my opinion though, but i agree, we need to find some way to address this. either the modders or the devs. It will make for a better and more enjoyable game when we can all stay in game at the end game and see it through to an enjoyable game end.

-Teal

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Just a quick add on that occurred to me: What if we could find a way for smaller fleets to have concentration of craft against another (12 craft have 12 targets) but in the end game where we have say... 100 ships (we would have 100 craft have 100 targets) in other words we spread the target range with the larger fleets and prevent them from "ganging up" on single targets. The ai, could be tweaked to do that. How I don't know, but it seems possible. And therefor the end game becomes "Survivable" by strategic end game players with mid to small fleets. Instead of a slug fest between to massive huge fleets to see who has the most ships and so who ultimately wins. In this way the strategies truely win, and not just the numbers.

Well.... just my rather opinionated two cents, sorry if i have offended anyone. Take care and keep playing!

-Teal

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And what stops us nail eating MP Sinners from targeting the ship manually, which the Ai can't do??? This just introduced a cheat for human players surely???

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hm, another idea: how about emergency shield generators? they cost some am to acticate, and once activated constantly drain drain a portion of am. but they also improve shields, preferable a one time boost and an increase in mitigation. this could be something to automate (lets say, it only activates when mitigation is already at 50 or 60%) and it need not be unbalanced. after all, focus fire would then force the enemy to keep the generators on, which causes a drain in am, which keeps him from using those precious abilites. besides having him waste valuable firepower. it might be an ability that every capship has and that improves a little bit each level (but also am cost should rise, since the reserve for higher lvl ships is much larger).

of course, you'd probably get the kol a new ability instead of those improved shields, but that is not such a huge concern.

just for numbers: what about a 100 am activation and a 3 am/sec. cost for say 250 shield boost and 15% extra mitigation? just remember, to keep it up for even a minute, this would cost 100 + 60*3= 228 am. thats quite a lot for lower ship levels.

it may need adjustments across races, since I'd view advent's ways of helping with shields would be too strong if the same numbers as for tec were used. but I think its a proposition which does give you a trade-off. more shields at the expense or less abilities? more ff to kill a cap for good or better damage efficiency? and if implemented with a decent autocast system if would not even require that much more player attention.

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Quoting Shadowhal,

reply 13

hm, another idea: how about emergency shield generators? they cost some am to acticate, and once activated constantly drain drain a portion of am. but they also improve shields, preferable a one time boost and an increase in mitigation. this could be something to automate (lets say, it only activates when mitigation is already at 50 or 60%) and it need not be unbalanced. after all, focus fire would then force the enemy to keep the generators on, which causes a drain in am, which keeps him from using those precious abilites. besides having him waste valuable firepower. it might be an ability that every capship has and that improves a little bit each level (but also am cost should rise, since the reserve for higher lvl ships is much larger).

of course, you'd probably get the kol a new ability instead of those improved shields, but that is not such a huge concern.

just for numbers: what about a 100 am activation and a 3 am/sec. cost for say 250 shield boost and 15% extra mitigation? just remember, to keep it up for even a minute, this would cost 100 + 60*3= 228 am. thats quite a lot for lower ship levels.

it may need adjustments across races, since I'd view advent's ways of helping with shields would be too strong if the same numbers as for tec were used. but I think its a proposition which does give you a trade-off. more shields at the expense or less abilities? more ff to kill a cap for good or better damage efficiency? and if implemented with a decent autocast system if would not even require that much more player attention.

Interesting thought, but im not as technical as you, and wonder how it could be done? And could it be done by modders, or would this require the devs? Good idea, i just don't quite follow the tech part. The part about more shields more cost i understand.

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kwm1800

Join Date 03/2008

+26

By the way guys, I see some people are mentioning real-war situations here, let me contribute....

First of all, the reason those heavy cruisers and battleships got destroyed fairly easily in WWII is because it was the transaction to modern warfare (Air force dominant) and those big ships were the victioms of the change. In fact, they were useful in WWI where there was little or no airforce existed to kill the battleships.

In the battleship vs. battleship battles, it actually took a while to finish the battle (compared to modern warfare), and sometimes the results were drew (neither of them were able to give enough damange, and sometimes crew got exhausted.) Remember, the cannons of WW I~II battleships are very inaccurate and usually miss the target a lot.

In contrast, in modern warfare, there arn't many military gears strong enough to sustain attacks; most modern missiles and torpedos are lethal enough to insta-gib most of warships except probably US carriers. What determines the survivality and endurance of certain fleet are intel, not actual physical endurance to resist the damange.

So, is Sins of Solar Empire close to WW-era or Modern era? I think it is more like WW-era, or even say, medival era (where the battles are usually long.) We don't have units with intelligent to shoot down missiles and torpedos, and most of weapons are not lethal enough to insta-kill one frigate like those of modern warfare do. Of course there is no real intel-units (oh, I have another suggestion for this game from this......)

At last, comparing US carrier and SOASE's capital ships are very inaccurate at the best. Again, SOASE is NOT mirroring modern warfare. And actually carrier is extremely powerful and strong; the fighters ARE the weapons of the carrier.

If US carrier is implemented in SOASE, it would be like a unit with about 3000 weak HP and armour, but have like 20 squadrons with 200 dps per squadron. But clearly we don't have such unit in this game.

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So it basically comes down to this summary...

Problem - Cap ships are not used because they are not worth the research and production costs. This is true in all game modes, but most prevalent in multiplayer. (In single player, its possible to get such a commanding lead that resources are no longer a problem.)

Solution - Do something, anything really, so cap ships are more useful and worth buying. This could be increasing damage, increasing survivability, reducing cost, adding special defensive auto-abilities, or any combination of the above.

So I guess we wait and see what the devs think... I read this whole post, was there a dev post somewhere in it? If so, I missed it.

Gerdofal

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i useually have around 70 normal frigates,20 cruiser carriers, and some far-distance attackers to fight for me along with around 1 carrier, 2 battleships,and 1 planet-go-boom ships(al lcap) when i have a huge fleet so it takes a while for them to knock each other out even though there might be more ships agianst me.

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Quoting Gerdofal,

reply 16

So it basically comes down to this summary...

Problem - Cap ships are not used because they are not worth the research and production costs. This is true in all game modes, but most prevalent in multiplayer. (In single player, its possible to get such a commanding lead that resources are no longer a problem.)

Solution - Do something, anything really, so cap ships are more useful and worth buying. This could be increasing damage, increasing survivability, reducing cost, adding special defensive auto-abilities, or any combination of the above.

So I guess we wait and see what the devs think... I read this whole post, was there a dev post somewhere in it? If so, I missed it.

Gerdofal

first off, no I don't think there has been a dev post in here, no idea whether this discussion will find any consideration.

secondly, I think you are only diagnosing the symptome of the problem, not its origin. sure, the capships are not worth their cost, but why is that?

I think the core of the problem is survivability. if there is a significantly stronger, but more expensive unit (more so than a comparable force of weaker units), players will only want to produce them, if they know they can destroy some of the enemy forces and then pull the unit out for repairs and such. my impression is that capital ships work fairly fine at the early portions of the game, when fleets are not that large. if you really do encounter a massive fleet early on vs your capship, chances are you can exploit their concentration of forces and srike somewhere else.

to give you an example, let's consider you had a lvl 1 kol fight, say 10 tec light frigates. the cost (excluding the research) are comparable, I don't know them by heart, but offhand I'd say the frigs cost a bit more metal, while the kol requires some crystal. stats wise, the kol has 3000 hp, 1250 shields and a firepower of 51 d/s, whereas the lights together have 6000 hp, 3500 shields and 90 d/s. I'd say the frigates would win a battle to the last man, but it would take quite some time (4250/ 90 ~ 47 sec. and that excludes shield mititation and restore rates, so it should be quite a bit longer). therefore, it seems realistic that the kol will destroy a few frigates and then pull out when it is somewhat dangerous. which can well prove a tactical victory for the capship player.

however, in large scale battles with dozens or even hundreds of ships, the capships advantage of survivability is gone, they go down so fast that it does not matter anymore what exact ships you lose, as long as a) the enemy loses even more firepower and the losses can be replaces quickly and easily. neither of which is really the case with capital ships.

mind you, I did argue my example with a lvl 1 kol, and some would say higher lvl capships are better off, but consider that the levling is also a resource, either money for buying them or time in battles to earn them. and that hinders quick and/ or cheap replacement and often enough time is as much a resource as creds & the rest.

in any case, that is why I argued for mitigation tweaks to fix the problem. because I think that they are not supposed to be as cost-effective as frigates, but instead have a survivability bonus which allows them to engage and destroy several targets and still survive a battle intact, if somewhat managed. I just pronounce the advantage that I think they are supposed to have, more, in particular at later stages.

that all is of course not to say that capships should be able to stand up to proloned barrages of huge armadas too long. having them survive for a minute or so vs hundreds of enemy ships is equally absurd.

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Quoting Shadowhal,

reply 18

secondly, I think you are only diagnosing the symptome of the problem, not its origin. sure, the capships are not worth their cost, but why is that?

You are right, I'm not trying to diagnose the origin. I'm looking at it from a gameplay perspective. The origin doesn't matter so much as the fact that you have a piece here that isn't used. The idea is to fix the piece.

If, for example, they really upgrade their guns and DPS but don't change survivability, they may again be useful. So there are multiple possible fixes.

Personally, I like the mitigation and survivability fix the best (just as you said)... but that is by no means the only fix. Anything that makes them a desirable piece in the game is a good fix.

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I think I agree, we up the mitigatio/survivability then also make the DPS much better. So far the only thing about the caps that feels correct is early game or when your seiging a planet with one.

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Here is my idea:

Mitigation should be a function of how many ships you have in the gravity well.

Let's say its (#ofshipsfiringatyourship)(#ofshipsyouown)/(someconstant).

That way if you have a single capital, it won't be mitigated so your enemy can kill it. But if you have multiple ships, they have to kill some of them through general fleet vs fleet fire before it becomes effective to single out the capital ship.

Just my thoughts!

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Here is my idea:

Mitigation should be a function of how many ships you have in the gravity well.

Let's say its (#ofshipsfiringatyourship)(#ofshipsyouown)/(someconstant).

That way if you have a single capital, it won't be mitigated so your enemy can kill it. But if you have multiple ships, they have to kill some of them through general fleet vs fleet fire before it becomes effective to single out the capital ship.

Just my thoughts!

I kind of like that idea. It would go alone with the idea you need to take out the escorts so you can get at the target.

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Yeah, it makes you have to deal with the fleet before dealing with the larger ships, while still enabling people to take out capital ships early game.

The equation wouldn't be EXACTLY that but something close. I'm sure they could implement it easily.

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Quoting Seth_Dracovitch,

reply 9

Eh, in my opinion cap ships are good as is, I usually have one of each with an extremely large fleet (yeah you can get sixteen but the straight five are more manigable). I micromanage the good abilities and autocast anything that I really don't care for. Usually all my cap ships survive fights because of the tactics I use with them, as for enemy cap ships, the only time I'm ever "Oh damn I need to target that" is if it's lvl 4+, otherwise I just let it fall to the random strikecraft and frigates of mine that go for it over another target.

you play against AI

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Quoting HeavenlyS,

reply 24

you play against AI

Hard AI and the occasional multiplayer, more so the AI with the beta... it really doesn't matter who plays against what that's really not an issue.

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