I have, finally, read everything in this thread up to the post time on this. To start off, I am going to go into my, probably pointless balance-wise, thoughts on the economy system. I cheat, going to say it flat out. My starting K is 20x larger than normal, (I mentioned the cheating part right?) and I use +300% modifiers for myself. I play 2 HWs, taking Blade Spawners and Spire Corvettes, and play as Normal+Champion. I use FS 4/10, Spirecraft Hard, Golems Hard, Botnet, Z-Traders, Resistance 10/10, Dyson Sphere 10/10, and currently trying out Dark Spire 4/10 for my newest game, an 8/8 against a Raid Engine and Heroic. The Map is a Maze A type with 120 planets. Most of my K goes into unlocking pretty much every single starship, baring cloakers, getting MKII in my triangles, MK III in SBS and Corvettes, the rest into econ upgrades and defenses. I've often debated if I could just win the game right at the start with the sheer amount of things I can use with that, but probably not on a Maze sytle map, and certainly not with CSGs on. Besides, I enjoy playing with the FS campaign, since I like to face the AI with a similar motto that the Spire use. "Yeah, you beat my big hammers and won the war. I will get the REALLY BIG hammers and take it all back now."
If I build my entire starship fleet I WILL have to build some Matter Converters, and it WILL hurt my econ, and that isn't even starting to build up any major defenses on my HWs. Unless I expand and start racking up AIP I am never going to get enough power without taking a serious hit from building so many Matter Converters. The +300% modifier helps offset that, mostly. I cant suffer complete and total loss, or even a >80% loss, of my starship fleet and not expect some serious pain to come my way. I certainly cant refleet it up in under an hour without tanking my econ into ground, and that is with MKIII Harvesters. The fleet ships may be nice for defense, but if the exos come and my starships are gone, I am going to lose planets, and possibly the game.
Does that mean the economy is balanced? Not a freaking clue. Is my setup a completely rediculs extreme and probably shouldn't be a major concern balance wise? Yes. However it does, IMO, show that the economy isn't as OP as you might think. Even at this most extreme edge I don't have the resources to build everything so quickly that losses are meaningless. Mostly I play with the 300% multipliers just so I don't have to wait 4 hours to fleet up the starships and start with the explosions. Does the current econ allow me to eventually hit a point that I stop caring about the costs of things that are not Z-Trader items or the more expensive FS related ones? Yes. Typically with my setup, that is about 8 worlds beyond my HWs or so, given average econ gains from them. That is going with MKIII Econ Stations on all non-HW planets. And, given how much cheater sauce I have, that seems legit. I estimate I have 6x stronger economy than a normal player should have, and if you can take and control a 50 world empire then you should have enough economy to build pretty much whatever you want almost as quickly as you want, at least that's my opinion. Personally I think a good idea would be, as Martyn van Buren said, to remove the extra resource nods on the human HWs while buffing either the home command station, or better yet the little people pods. (The name of them escapes me right now.) That way, as Martyn said, the starting econ is just as strong over all, but you wont just automatically get MKIII harvesters because it wont be as valid as a boost anymore. Unless you can find several worlds close by that have 3/3 or better nodes, you would be better off with MKIII Econ Stations. (And if you boost the pods rather than the home command, it makes losing them all the harder for you. ~realizes I am helping the AI~ Crap...)
Now then, on the flip side, for champion balance, that is just kinda broken economy wise IMO. Either the ships given are just too cheap on your econ or the economy gains given are just too strong, but with my setup by the time I get cruiser hulls I only need half the number of planets for energy to become a non-issue. Hell I used to never build most of the Spirecraft after the energy remake/starship re-balance, at least not until I had 10 worlds counting my HWs. I just didn't have enough energy to get a useful number of them to make them matter. Thanks to nebula rewards, I start using them much sooner and only ever building caps of the nicer ones (Implosion, Siegetower, Attritioner, Ion), and I still have more than enough energy to spare. Given the fact that as long as you can survive the deepstrike response, (and possibly other things like raid engines) you can easily get up to cruisers with only just your starting HWs, that seems pretty broken IMO. The energy rewards certainly seem overpowered. I don't know if that is because of having 2 HWs or not though. I also cant judge the gains of M+C, because just the energy gains alone can give a serious buff. If doing a nebula allows me to kill a Matter Converter, then I get an immediate gain of 100 M+C per tick. The champions, the mod forts, and the nebula ships themselves don't seem overpowered to me, however the ships I mainly use for defense so my view of those may be off.
I think of nerf of the energy rewards is in order, but more important than that is the fact that you can just turtle up and go out and snag up some serious gains with very little in the way of AI response. Yes the nemesis fleet is nasty as hell, but that doesn't stop you from getting so powerful early on that only AI HWs and Core Worlds are a danger to you. There needs to a more dynamic response from the AI for Champs. Not just a buff numerically, but something a bit more active. Maybe the AI should start sending search and destroy parties out for the Champs periodically, similar to the spawns for shard recoveries but more powerful and less often. That or just cap the number of nebulas you can do by the number of planets you have. It might not be fair for the champ only players, but it would certainly help tone down the "Stay and home and power rush a Shadow Battleship" style of gameplay.
As far as the Hull type/modifiers issue, I can honestly say I am completely uncertain. I started playing after LoS was already out, with the Alien Bundle. I don't feel I have enough experience in that regard to give any input at all, especially since I have nothing from pre5.0 to compare it to. Are there certain ships that are better at their jobs than others? I think so, but isn't that the point?. Have I played with them all extensively enough to know exactly what is the best type of what? Nope. Only that there are some I like better than others. Personally I prefer low cap ships like Blade Spawners and Stealth Battleships to swarmers, but then that's just a playstyle difference IMO. I like smaller numbers of powerful weapons rather than smothering my foes with uncountable hordes of weaker ones. (Off topic question, what are caps like for starships/low cap ships like on Low or Ultra-Low Caps? Given my playstyle I wonder if I would like that more. I've only tried normal.)
Personally, I favor the idea of a Bonus Ship Omission File, but that is not because I feel are too weak/too strong, but rather certain ship have mechanics I don't like/don't want to deal with. The two that I can think of off the top of my head, Younglings and Spire Gravity Drains. The first of which is something I don't like the concept of. I would rather build something I know will NOT die 3 minutes after I build it. That is all well and good for drones, but those are more of a "Holy crap I need some defenses and I need them now before I die" kind of thing. Great for the Enclave ships (Which I love and thus cant shut off the Neinzul expansion) since that is a natural extension of my turrets, but crappy for a ship I want to use against the AI IMO.
As for the SGDs, I think gravity should be limited to immobile things or extra power, small number thing. I don't mind grav turrets, I love those. I also don't mind grav drills. Hits me just as hard as the AI. That core posst who's name I cant recall right now? Also ok. Its an AI HW post, it is SUPPOSED to help the AI kick me in the nuts. Grav guardians are also not a problem. Most I have ever had to deal with was 6 of them on a single world, and that place was a MKIV that had been on alert for ages. (It had a counter attack post and I didn't feel like dealing with it.) They are strong, but then they are a guardian and even at its worst I have never seen 10 or more of any given guardian on a single world. The Spire Gravity Drains combine powerful grav effects, (max speed of 8 at MKIV, and I think its 16 at MKI) a fairly good range on said effects, (isn't it 8k or something like that, getting larger per mark?) a fairly large amount of HP, and, being a fleet ship, significant numbers. You can easily run into 100 or more of them, making just sniping them off a significant pain to micro unless you have sniper style ships and can keep them safe long enough to do it. On top of that, while they are definitely decent in human hands, you already get similar, and less micro requiring IMO, units with just the starting options. A cap of Riots, all three marks, will definitely slow things to a crawl, as would spider turrets. Grav turrets can be placed right where you want them and always be repaired/rebuilt exactly where you need them. And they have bigger range. (Especially MKIIIs) In the AI's hands, they are much more affective since the AI can micro to a greater extreme. If it gets them it always seems to have them everywhere it needs to so that it has as much coverage as possible, they are in every single exo/shard recovery making those, especially the recoveries, so much harder than they need to be that I tend to roll a new map if the AI gets them. (Wow, a lot of ranting about SGDs) Ironically, the one thing they do help solve is champion deepstriking into whatever nebula they want. All in all, I would prefer the simple option of just turning off those two mechanics and enjoying the game more. The Bonus Ship Omission File would give me that option, and thus gets my vote.
I can say that armor doesn't feel like it does much, unless its a LOT of armor. Even then, only those things with both a ton of armor and a ton of HP seem to make a difference. (I am looking at you Hardened FF. How come you die faster than my other FFs despite having 500k worth of armor?) As for pen, I feel that unless its just as extreme as some armor, its also of limited value. However, I do find armor rottring to be a serious threat to anything with armor, as even those things that only have 3k-10k worth of armor get seriously kafcked by those, as the increased damage is for EVERYTHING shooting at those victim of said rotting. Still, anything with less than about 3k worth of armor probably doesn't care about rotting, either to not having any armor or those things with non-extreme pen already have enough pen that they might as well not have armor anyway.
Finally, as for the blobbing issue, I don't feel it's an issue. While a major fleet blob can do as it pleases against unalerted planets, if the world has been on alert for any significant time, most especially with MIV worlds, you are either going to need some support to keep your loses low enough, either if its repairers, starships, or superweapons. It also doesn't negate the idea of counters, only proves it is more effective to have a well balanced fleet than having just 1 or two types of ships. While early on you might be able to get away with smashing your blob against any major force the AI throws at you, eventually your blob is going to get outclassed by the AI, either from the AI blob having better tech than you, or just having a bigger blob than you. Losing your blob comes at the cost of your mobile defense. Now if you are able to make 1-3 choke points as the only way in, good for you. You might not need a mobile defense. But while static defenses are good against waves, they don't mean much against major CPAs or exos unless its still early or early-mid game. Now if your defenses can handle CPAs or exos, you either have one hell of a design, (my hats off to you in that case), only a single choke point you need to defend, or you have Spire Cities. (I love those things.) It is also possible that you're only risking your entire fleet blob when there is no wave counter/plenty of time left, and/or no exo at 90% or better. In that case, you are making the (smart) strategic decision to not risk everything you have when you know you might need it soon. You are rewarded (likely) by not being slaughtered by the AI during waves/cpas/exos. You could always turn off the wave warnings, then you will never know if you need your fleet soon or not. (But does that affect exo counters? I've never tried it myself.) Is the fact that the AI doesn't rush you after losing your blob a minor issue? Kinda. I wish the AI could try and take advantage of your weakened state without a wave, CPA, or an exo, but that is a tempo thing. The devs have said flat out that they are not going to take the tempo away from the player. All things considered, I can live with that and still enjoy the game. (Though I think Keith is planing on giving the AI some type of toy to partially remedy that. [size=3.5pt]And he wonders why people cheat. Look at what kind of toys he gives this AI...[/size])
(Edited for clarity, and to add in my thoughts of the Bonus Ship Omission File as well as armor)
